Hello there, I'm Laura.
I come from beautiful Provence and learnt pastry art in France.
About 10 years ago, I quitted my incipient career to live out my passion. After some 6 years experience in restaurants, hotels & pastry shops, I started teaching to share my passion for French pastry and for food knowledge. I've been teaching pastry classes for 3 years now.
If you feel curious, here's a bit more about me, how I unexpectedly landed in Germany and what is it about pastry & baking that interests me so much.
Better to make the leap than to be sorry…
I started my career in a consulting company specializing in drinking water and sanitation facilities, traveling to destinations as exotic as Panama or Burkina Faso...
Still I soon felt the urge of switching to my lifelong passion - cooking and baking.
Switching career was also for me a matter of changing lifestyle.
You know when you cannot stand anymore facing your computer all day long, and when you also wish you could decide yourself where your workplace and life should be?
I thus first took the cook apprenticeship in Lyon, and then gradually specialized in pastry till I also passed the pastry Chef exam in Paris.
I kept on building up my skills with several ongoing trainings at Ecole Ferrandi, Bellouet Conseil (Paris) and Pfersich Trendforum in Ulm, and still am eager to develop my knowledge. Pastry and baking are never-ending learning fields!
Moving to Munich and becoming a pastry instructor…
Meanwhile, I had gone my way, from Chamonix, to Delft (NL), and eventually moving to Munich. Coming here was one of the most unexpected turns my life took (so far?!), and yet it matches my way of life very well.
I'm glad my professional experience took me to many different contexts, from small family-owned restaurants to fine-dining ones, from hotels to pastry shops, from France to Netherlands and then Germany.
As a pastry instructor I've achieved the goal of running my own business and finding my work-life balance. It has been a wonderful way to meet many more new faces as I was allowed to in pastry labs or restaurant kitchens and I feel very thankful for that. And I enjoy the freedom of mind that I now can have regarding pastry itself.
If I were asked why do I spend time baking, and how do I choose my recipes…
When I was younger, and till my first years as a professional, I was fascinated by how much sophistication can be put into a dessert or a cake. Pastry allows us to consider a recipe in terms of taste, texture and shape altogether.
Growing in age and experience, I found myself asking why is it that we bake, if cakes are beautiful but do not eventually taste like expected, or if in the end we are not so sure anymore what is it that we're eating...
“Das Auge isst mit”, say the Germans, “on mange avec les yeux”, in French - yes, that’s true, we pastry chefs are taught to keep the aesthetics in mind, and it’s actually a creative, challenging and versatile part of our job. But the coupled effect of new technical possibilities and greater online audience has dramatically influenced the field over the last decades.
I personally do not want to spend twice as much time decorating a cake as preparing it, all the more if this is to dampen the taste or add ingredients that are not healthy. I like cakes that seduce by their elegance, as much for contemplation as for tasting!
Try and make the best possible cakes, but don’t forget the rest in the meantime, this would be my philosophy.
We live in an age where it is not easy finding out what for foods we're cooking and eating. Food has become an industry.
The good side of it, is more science and knowledge available - also for artisans - to achieve better results in recipes. But it makes us all responsible of researching about the ingredients we use and the foods we buy.
Delightful. Simple & Elegant. Responsible. Open-minded.
